In a nutshell!

I love nuts (!), salted peanuts being my favourite. They are something that would only ever be in my house at Christmas time because I could not be trusted to just eat a handful, or a small amount. If I had a bag in my house, no matter what size, it would be devoured in one sitting and not make it to the following day! 

My mum used to always have a basket on the kitchen table, at Christmas time, that was full of assorted nuts, in their shells, with a nutcracker that you had to be careful you did not trap your fingers in. I'm not sure whether that 70's contraption would still be allowed to be bought for the twenty-first century health and safety conscious! On that note I decided to Google nutcrackers and I found it! It was a weapon!

After a bit of a blip, nearly fainting, at my second #kettlercise class it was suggested that I eat almonds and fat free fromage frais as a pre-workout meal to enable me to get through the session. The protein would be slow release whilst exercising. Then not long after, whilst on a walk with friends, we had a discussion about the benefits of almonds and brazil nuts. The man commenting has 6 almonds and 2 Brazil nuts a day. Ever the one to see if adding these to my diet might help my perimenopausal symptoms, I started doing some research. I won't even go into the Big Brother is watching you but articles started appearing in my Facebook news feed!

I have taken from an article in O, Magazine a couple of things that I found useful. Read the whole article at the following link; How nuts can help you live longer:

Brazil Nuts 
The bad news: You can't eat a lot of them. Each of these Amazonian nuts contains about 33 calories—the equivalent of nearly 10 M&M's. The good news: You needn't go overboard to reap their health benefits. Just two nuts per day for 12 weeks can increase blood levels of the mineral selenium by 64 percent. Selenium is essential for proper immune function, as it helps build germ-fighting white blood cells. 
Serving size: 6 nuts, 186 calories 

Almonds 
Call them the skinny nuts. In a 2013 study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, people who ate about one and a half servings of almonds with breakfast felt a 35 percent decrease in appetite an hour later. When the nuts were consumed as an afternoon snack, they quashed appetites by about two and a half times that, helping the subjects naturally eat less for the rest of the day. 
Serving size: 23 nuts, 164 calories 

It is interesting that just over a year a Mediterranean diet was being purported to being the healthiest diet for anyone to follow. Nuts are often found in a Mediterranean diet. 

I have made a conscious decision to have a healthy snack every day. Whilst getting my head around the new Weight Watchers SmartPoints I very quickly discovered that some things that I would have classed as nice, healthy snacks were too high in SmartPoints to justify having them! 14g of almonds is 2 sp (anywhere between fourteen to sixteen almonds) and two Brazil nuts are 1 sp; so fairly low at 3 sp. I then found these amazing little pots that fit that amount of nuts in them perfectly!

I do Kettlercise twice a week and my pre-workout meal is now 24g almonds (4sp), fat free fromage frais (3sp) and a banana (0sp). I have also tried having this before doing a 10 mile walk on a Sunday and discovered that I had more energy than my usual weekday breakfast of a boiled egg and a piece of toast. I now, therefore, have my pre-workout meal as a breakfast on a Saturday and Sunday; for those interested that equates to 7sp.

I also now try and have the almond and Brazil nuts snack at least three times a week. I know that everything does not happen instantly but I have also read some really good things about almonds reducing belly fat; Almonds can reduce belly fat. 

Let's see!